Quo Vadis?

It's going to be a year since I took a first step towards fitness. It was in the beginning of March 2014 that I started walking & slowly moved on to running inside my neighbourhood park. Thanks to the internet I landed on the Chennai Runners page on Facebook & so on April 2nd 2014 I joined a group of runners and started running regularly. From a barely 3km initial run, I started doing longer runs and decided that by December 2014 I will do a 10km in TWCM & lose some weight. I ticked both those boxes earlier than I thought. By December I had completed 2 half marathons & lost 14kgs weight. A lot of people helped me in this effort but Venu Sir who guided me initially & George who trained me on the basics of better running stand out. I will always be grateful to them. Another person who helped me run was Lakshmi who trained with me under George & slowly we ran together & still do. A running buddy can be a great support for new comers & the high ...

You may have seen or even run in the Ridley Rune recently, but do you know anything about the reason for the run, the Olive Ridley Turtles? With a desire to learn a little more about the enigmatic Olive Ridleys which traverse great distances to reach the beaches of the East Coast & some pockets of the West Coast of India to make nests and lay eggs, usually in the same place each time a small group landed up in the Neelangarai beach at 11 PM on Saturday night the 21 st of February. The small size of the group was necessitated due to the abilities of the organizers the admirable members of the Students Sea Turtle Conservation Network who for over two decades patrol the beach from Neelangarai to Besant Nagar keeping a keen eye out for the nests of the Olive Ridley turtles and safely transport them to nature identical hatcheries for safe incubation and after hatching the hatchlings are safely released into the water. T...

Yennai Arinthal, by now the reviews are out and it appears to be a hit already. Having watched the movie on the second day here are my views, for reviews you can search online.   Yes you would know by all the publicity that this is the final of the cop trilogy and at the end of the movie you feel that this is a mix and match of the first two movies, which is a good thing since both the earlier movies were hits, the chances of going wrong are less   There is a lot of familiarity in the movie that you can almost guess what is going to happen and that somehow hinders the movie   The female leads have been etched well and they add value to the movie and in GVM style they are the modern women who are far removed from the usual “blonde type” heroines   The entry of the female leads become the Achilles heel of the so far fearless hero and similar to the earlier movies the loss of the lady love is a crucial part of the movie   The father & adopted d...

Watched the movie I with some trepidation because it was on the second day and the mixed reviews primed my mind to temper my expectations. The movie was 189 minutes long as per the censor certificate and that made me instantly look at my watch; with a 10.45 pm start it was going to be a very long night. Since there are many reviews online and I’m not a movie reviewer I will just stick to my views separated into the positives and negatives.   Positives:   Vikram, enough said. He has taken a lot of pains for the movie and it is visible on screen. Even a casual viewer would not fail to be impressed but his commitment to his profession and the lengths he has gone to. You can just watch for this and become a fan   Amy Jackson, though hardly looks Indian slowly grows on you. She is both hot and cute with a bikini scene thrown in for extra measure. She fills the screen and at the end she holds her own despite all the others on screen. Her lip syncing appears much b...

So in April this year I planned to do the 10 km run in TWCM14 and probably loose a little weight in the process. After the TWCM I see: 1. HM in DRHM14 - Check 2. HM (trail) in CTM - Check 3. 10km in Heritage Run - Check 4. HM in TWCM14 - Check 5. Weight loss 14 kgs - Check Along the way 1. 120 kms cycle ride to Mahabalipuram & back - check 2. Lots of fun - check 3. New friends - check 4. Better eating - check I remember my first run with my running group. It was early morning on the 2 nd of April 2014 when a few runners and beginners met and set off towards the now usual route towards CSI Ewarts. It was pure murder to say the least and by the time I managed to walk, jog, run, stumble crawl back after a miserable 3 kilometre or so I thought that it was all a big mistake. For someone weighing 112 kgs it all seemed like a big mistake. I somehow managed to make it for the next run and the same story replayed again but somehow it felt just a little bit better. B...

In April 2014 I joined a group of runners with an intention of completing the 10km run in The Wipro Chennai Marathon 2014 some 8 months later. Today a day before the TWCM it all feels quite anticlimactic and strangely the excitement of the first race is no longer there. I have already completed 2 Half marathons of which 1 was a trail marathon and 1 10 km run and I am now encouraging new comers to run their first 10km race well. What is more, the group that I run with got named as Tower Twisters and is now over 100 members strong with nearly 40 runners meeting and running regularly. There are many reasons for both the developments but in hindsight I would like to think it is the selflessness of some members especially the senior members of the group who were willing to sacrifice their personal time so that a new comer could run. The term senior refers not the actual age of the member but their age with reference to their running life and some senior runners could be younger tha...

During a drive to the airport yesterday my        colleague remarked positivity works wonders. He said that he has trained himself to think “I hope it will be clear roads ahead” instead of the usual “I hope there is NO traffic ahead”. The fact that we made the 19 odd kilometres commute in under 45 minutes during the evening peak hour rush gave some credence to his statement. Later on I reflected on the excessive use of negative terms that we use daily. Red flag words like no, not, however, but, try and so many more. I call them red flag because the usage of these words triggers off a lot of unnecessary negativity in life. It does not take a lot does it to measure the words and keep them positive. A positive outlook really works wonders; the colleague said that when you are positive the universe somehow conspires to make good things happen to you. For discussion sake let us examine two words in the above list – but and try. There are no bu...